Review: 'Come Out And Play' Is A Xeroxed Horror Remake Disguising A New Director's Vanity Plate

By
Gabe Toro
|
The PlaylistMarch 19, 2013 at 2:01PM

Who in the hell is Makinov? The single-named director, who has appeared online in masked garb speaking power to his vague filmmaking manifesto, has placed his name all over “Come Out And Play,” an overly respectful remake of the infamous '70s cult chiller “Who Can Kill A Child?” The film opens with a smash cut not unlike a Michael Mann film, before eventually ignoring all credits and spotlighting the film’s title across the screen in huge font: “Makinov’s Come Out And Play.” When the film closes on a would-be shocker ending, the screen-filling credit is an offhanded “Made By” and then, in bulleted lettering, “M-A-K-I-N-O-V.”

Who in the hell is Makinov? The single-named director, who has appeared online in masked
garb speaking power to his vague filmmaking manifesto, has placed his name all
over “Come Out And Play,” an overly respectful remake of the infamous '70s cult chiller “Who Can Kill A Child?” The film opens with a smash cut not unlike
a Michael Mann film, before eventually ignoring all credits and spotlighting
the film’s title across the screen in huge font: “Makinov’s Come Out And Play.”
When the film closes on a would-be shocker ending, the screen-filling credit is
an offhanded “Made By” and then, in bulleted lettering, “M-A-K-I-N-O-V.”

All this swagger despite the film being a carbon copy of a
horror movie from almost forty years old ago. The original “Who Can Kill A
Child?” is a down and dirty chiller where a vacationing couple happen upon an
island they discover to be largely abandoned. The slow realization descends
upon this unlucky, privileged duo: overnight, the children swarmed the
adults and murdered them, forcing our endangered couple to ask themselves the
titular question. The ghastly prospect was taboo back then, but watching it
today, we have to avoid thinking of the various killer kid films over the years
since that had protagonists offing an evil tot in an act of survival or even
revenge. Even back then, audiences were only a couple of years away from laughable
but hypnotic cult curio “The Children,” which involved parents forced to cut
the hands off their irradiated offspring to survive. Last year, a mega blockbuster
involving the horrific murders of children sold its broadcast rights to ABC
Family -- it was called “The Hunger Games.”

Remarkably, for all his boastful authorship, Makinov changes
very little from the source, which is a surprise considering the evolution of
gore in mainstream horror filmmaking. Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Vinessa Shaw play
the couple this time around, vacationing in Spain before her planned
childbirth. Thanks to the sharp digital photography, there’s a definite texture
to the visuals, as the sparse locations force the viewer to gravitate towards
the peeling paint on apartment walls and the smoky mystery of local bars.
Without being disrespectful, it comes across immediately that these two
foreigners are interlopers, and there’s certain crudeness to his polite but
indelicate gesture to pay a local fisherman for a boat in order to take a
daytime joyride.

Once they arrive on the island, Makinov’s visuals highlight
a sharp and contemporary mindset, one that distorts the comfort level of these
two as they slowly find every building in the area to be empty. The actors
sadly have nothing to play: she’s concerned and terrified, he’s an uncertain
cowboy determined to keep his composure in an attempt to avoid worrying his
companion. Eventually, the kids (who speak non-subtitled Spanish, though their
actions are largely nonverbal) begin to slowly reveal themselves. They’re armed
and eager to play, keeping with the scare-level of the original: what was scary
wasn’t that these children were killers, but that they seemed to treat murder
and torture like a game amongst peers, laughing and joking as they picked at
corpses and taunted our leads.

The only real problem with this modern visual sensibility is
that it doesn’t seem to inform a perspective beyond a few cheap scares. For
those familiar with the original film, there’s almost nothing to see here. But
given that 99% of this film’s audience will likely never hear of “Who Can Kill
A Child?” it still won’t seem fresh. Perhaps it’s the years and years of
aforementioned killer kid movies that have let us know when a youngster poses a
threat. Maybe it’s just the Tyranny of Genre, which forces Makonov, like most
filmmakers of this era, to over-emphasize that this is a horror film, with
soundtrack stings, oppressive camera angles, and extreme POV shots. "See? It’s
scary," says Makinov, "I made it scary." Compare that to the original film, which
has that uneasy idea of being shot straightforwardly, without an obvious emphasis
on frights. You don’t know a certain shot is meant to provoke until it does.
Today’s filmmaking, which the hooded mystery man Makinov thinks he’s above, is all booming sound and billboard
plot developments, a big neon Eat-At-Joe’s accompanying whichever threat is
approaching our leads. It’s really an unfortunate development in most modern
genre films, but far more noticeable in a film with a story as threadbare as
this.

The closest this film comes to a point of sorts is during
the end credits. After that hugely self-important sign-off by Makinov, there
are minimal credits, mostly devoted to the cast, and almost none granted to the
technical artists responsible. The final note is a somber dedication, “To the
martyrs at Stalingrad.” It’s the moment where this kid-killing bombast finally
rings not just false, but gratuitous. Doing a faithful remake of a little-known
Spanish thriller from years ago is a modest but understandable goal. Having a
distractingly troubling political message that is in no way supported by the
text of a movie almost wallpapered with your name? If anything, “Come Out And
Play” is a landmark in the history of chutzpah. [D]